Chapter I- Chapter I- “Was I then a monster”: Deterritorialization, Personhood and Kinship: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
4.3 Revival of Neoliberal Eugenics in the Era of Artificial Reproductive Technology
Advancements in molecular genetics and simultaneous developments in biomedical technologies like pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) that enable designing of babies with selective genetic traits and elimination of harmful genetic diseases have perpetuated practice of “new eugenics”84 in the era of biotechnology. Amrita Banerjee argues that the eugenics practices that are stimulated by developments in the domain of reproductive medicine are entangled with the notion of biocapitalism. Banerjee states that the legitimization of “race as a purchasable good on an international scale, private enterprise paves the way for legitimizing the commodification of physical ability, mental aptitude, and many other traits”.85
Drawing on such study, one may argue that Desai’s Origins of Love aptly replicates how in the age of bioengineering the physical attributes and reproducible biomatter are reified and are transformed into biocapital that are purchased and consumed by the privileged sections of society through markers of discursively determined hierarchy and privilege. In this context, one may refer to the episode in the novel where Sharmaji, the agent of the fertility clinic Madonna and Child, visits Kate and Ben to know their preferences about the physical attributes they would like to have in donor and the surrogate. Sharmaji proudly mentions to Kate and Ben that he is capable of catering to all kinds of demands made by his clients. The narrator says, “Sharmaji launched into another list once more: ‘Just tell me your requirements: tall, short, fat, thin, straight hair or curly hair- because you also need the egg from her, right?”86, in an instantiation as well as a caricature of the customized and consumerist culture of the ART industry. In a similar vein, the leaflet that is designed by the agent of the fertility clinic Madonna and Child aptly depicts how the vital matter and physical features are transformed into purchasable commodities:
84Marius Turda, Crafting Humans: From Genesis to Eugenics and Beyond (Taiwan: Taiwan National University Press, 2013), 92. In his book Turda argues that there is a transition from the earlier notion of eugenics that focused on improving nation’s population by denying procreative rights to prostitutes, drug addicts, criminals, and people who are categorized as abnormal and new eugenics of the biomedicalized society. Turda states that the new eugenics’ focus is laid on elimination of genetic diseases that are primarily caused by single gene mutation.
85 Banerjee, “Race and a Transnational Reproductive Caste System”, 124.
86Desai, Origins of Love, 372.
Don’t Worry Be Happy
Just Come to Collect Your Baby Use our Courier Cryogenic Service At 100 percent No Risk
…
That We Can Get You Egg Donor Any Way You Want Her
Big, Small, Slim, Tall It’s Your Call
…
You and Your Wife Can Take Rest New Life- Cheap and Best.87
The lampoon-like quality of the sing-song advert emerges as a pointer to the easy deliverables in the ART industry as depicted in the novel, an industry which puts high premium on consumer happiness akin to a high-selling commodity. In this context, one may refer to Donna Dickenson’s Body Shopping (2008) in which she examines the working policies of the fertility clinics.88 Dickenson’s study throws light on how the fertility clinics mimic the commercial companies in their act of advertising the bio-products and the babies as commodities and addressing their patients as clients who can choose gamete donors on the basis of their physical attributes that are allied to their racial preferences. Amrita Banerjee further argues that although the act of choosing the physical traits of the baby might be conceived as apolitical, it is enmeshed with the discourse and motivations of eugenics.
Fertility industries can be studied as important zones that promote subtle forms of eugenics at macro as well as metonymic levels by offering liberties to the consumers to choose their donors and design babies on the basis of biogenetic traits like skin and eye color, hair texture and height. One may here refer to Marius Turda’s Modernism and Eugenics (2010) in which he states that eugenics may be defined as a biological theory that is guided by the concept of human perfectibility and it aims to create a system of racial sanitization by protecting the nation from those who are categorized as unhealthy, diseased, and anti-social. Turda explains:
The external attributes of physical and mental infirmity were accentuated in order to legitimize eugenicists’ actions against individual who did not conform to the normality of the national community. The individual who was eugenically stigmatized
87 Desai, Origins of Love, 343.
88 Donna Dickenson, Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled by Flesh and Blood (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008).
was an individual whose biological and social identity was called into question and castigated accordingly. 89
In Biopolitics (2011) Thomas Lemke argues that the epistemic developments in the domains of biotechnology like organ transplantation, reproductive technology, and cloning have problematized Foucault’s explanation of biopolitics that is based on the notion of the human body as an integrated organic whole. “Biotechnology and biomedicine allow body’s dismantling and recombination that Foucault did not anticipate”90 and hence, Lemke suggests a revision in the notion of biopolitics that is confined to the notion of an integral body. In a similar vein, Nikolas Rose argues that in the current culture of human genetics the notion of biopolitics is entwined with the process of “subjectification” of biomedicine.91 The notion of subjectification throws light on how since the second half of twentieth century citizens have refused to remain as the passive recipients of the medical products, rather they have grown as active consumers who make decision about the medical treatments on the basis of the information available on the medical websites and multiple other sources that influence their decision-making process. In the era of biomedicalization, citizens have transformed into informed and active agents who are involved in making decisions about their health and vitality. Rose argues that in the current culture of ethopolitics, the molecular biopolitics is not guided by state led policies of population control and improvement of the national stock.
Rather biopolitcal regimes of modernity have been replaced by the individual management of genetic risk in the context of bioeconomy. In the new culture of “active citizenship” the agency accorded to the citizens is extended to the domain of reproductive technology where parents are offered liberties to make decision about the genetic traits that they would like to customize and configure in the baby they are planning to design through IVF.92
In contrast to Rose’s argument, Carolin Schurr argues that although in the current culture of biocapitalism parents appear to exercise their agency in reproductive matters, the notion of neoliberal eugenics has to be interpreted within the larger narratives of biopolitics that aim to regulate the quality and quantity of the population for the purpose of creating a healthy nation. This study is in consonance with Schurr’s argument that neoliberal eugenics
89 Marius Turda, Modernism and Eugenics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 67.
90 Lemke, Biopolitics, 94.
91Rose, Politics of Life Itself, 21.
92Ibidi., 23.
practices “recast rather than replace traditional state biopolitics”.93Biopolitics in the era of human genetics evolves as a result of collusion between government, pharmaceutical companies, and the citizens who are the active consumers of the biomedical products. The fair and healthy baby boy that the surrogate Sonia gives birth to in Origins of Love becomes an external manifestation of the complex entanglement between neoliberal eugenics and state-led biopolitics that aims to produce a fair and able male body that can be represented as the face of the Indian nation state, fairness and maleness being major markers in the politics of dynastic privilege in the Indian electoral context. Rohit narrates to Sonia about Renu Mishra’s eldest son who is not acknowledged as the member of the family because he was born differently able and hence is considered unfit to act as an extension of Renu Mishra’s political career and become the face of the nation. Rohit describes thus:
The child may have been an accidental product of another relationship, but partly because he was illegitimate and partly because he needed constant care, Renu Madam was advised that he would have to be smuggled away. He should not even be mentioned ever again. She could have brought him up in the house as someone else’s child but there were many who told her that a child with special needs might be politically risky, as voters like to see healthy, happy families.94
Renu Mishra’s family may be considered as a metonymic representation of the Indian nation state embedded in the biopolitical eugenics-driven policies that aim to purge the national community from the biological and political degeneration thereby creating a strong and healthy nation through bioengineered processes. The novel Origins of Love fictionally dramatizes how the genetic preferences enlisted by the parents are covertly entangled with the notion of neoliberal eugenics. Neoliberal eugenics may be defined as a practice of designing babies by eliminating the harmful cells that might cause mental and physical disabilities. In the novel, the health minister Renu Mishra says to Dr. Subhash and Dr. Anita Pandey that she wants to design a fair baby boy who in future will take over her political position and will rule the nation. Veenit Bhai carefully delineates the genetic traits he wants in the bioengineered baby:
We know that certain genetic qualities are important. Is there any way you can ensure that? Most importantly, it should have Renuji’s sagacity and my intellect; the rest we
93Carolin Schurr, “From Biopolitics to Bioeconomies: The ART of (re-)producing white futures in Mexico’s Surrogacy Market”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35.2 (2017), 241.
94 Desai, Origins of Love, 194.
can teach. The looks are unimportant but the child should be fair in complexion, because fairer babies do better.95
The designer baby in Desai’s Origin of Love throws light on how a structural homology is established between the body of the nation and the body of the baby who is presumed to embody an order of masculinity aligned to the political ideologies of the ruling party.
A parallel may be drawn between the fictional representation of the fair, tall, and intellectually superior designer baby portrayed in the novel Origins of Love and the current cultural climate of ultra-right-wing Hindutva domination that intends to create a pure racial imaginary for the purpose of reviving the supposed sanctity of the Aryan martial race. On 7th March 2017, The Indian Express published an article entitled “RSS wing has prescription for fair, tall, and customized babies” that discusses the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (Uterus Science Culture) project of the R.S.S.’s (Rashtriya Svayamsevaka Sangha) health wing Arogya Bharati which is driven by the objective of helping Indian parents to produce perfect progenies.96 The office bearer associated with the programme states that the project is inspired by Nazi eugenics and it aims to purge and restructure the Indian national community for creating a race of super humans with an urge to build a modern masculine nation with a high premium placed on purity and hygiene.97
Asish Nandy in Intimate Enemy (1983) discusses the reform movement of the nineteenth century colonial India that attempted to resurrect the image of Kshatriyahood that was considered to be emblematic of the authentic Indian warrior. Nandy argues that during the reform movement, Hindu reformers like Vivekananda and Swami Dayananda stated that
95 Desai, Origins of Love, 250.
96Ashutosh Bhardwaj, “RSS wing has prescription for fair, tall, ‘customised babies”, The Indian Express, May 7 2017. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/rss-wing-has-prescription-for-fair-tall-customised-babies-4644280/
(accessed on 1 August 2017). See also Shiv Visvanathan’s “Time, Modernity and the BJP” The Hindu, 28 July 2018. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/time-modernity-and-the-bjp/article24534804.ece (accessed on 6 August 2018). In the article Viswanathan speculates on how in the current political climate of India the Bharatiya Janata Party is playing the role of a “surrogate modernizer” by drawing on an analogy between the Indian mythic narratives and the current biomedical developments like “test-tube babies and plastic surgery to biotechnology” (n.pag).
97See Mukul Kesevan, “In his Image: The Importance of Being Sashi”, The Telegraph, 14 May 2017, https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170514/jsp/opinion/story_151438.jsp (accessed on 23 August 2017).
Kesevan’s article discusses the R.S.S.’s health wing Arogya Bharati’s project of designing customized babies in order to build a strong nation. Kesevan states that the Arogya Bharati project claims to liberate Indians from the burden of being non-white.
the loss of masculinity and cultural regression of the Hindus were due to loss of the original Aryan qualities. Nineteenth-century Bengali poet and dramatist Michael Madhusudan Dutt attempted to fictionally revive the image of the martial race by endorsing the order of masculinity embodied by mythic characters like Meghnad, Ravana and Krishna.98In a similar vein, in an article entitled “The Theory of Aryan Race and India” (1996) Romila Thapar traces the historical development of the concept of Hindutva99 in the early part of twentieth century by a group of people closely associated with the formation of R.S.S that was informed by the superiority-theory of Aryan race.100 Thapar’s article foregrounds how the theory of Aryan race has shaped the concept of Hindutva nation, and has informed current political ideologies of the country and Indian identity. The R.S.S group supported the eugenics policies implemented in Germany for purifying the nation from the Jews and proposed the formation of a Hindu nation state on similar principles by excluding the Muslims and the Christians.101 The image of the Hindu Arya is used by the political party as a major component for structuring the political ideologies and privileged identity-politics in India.
It is interesting to note how the order of masculinity embodied by the mythical Aryans had not merely historically informed the reform movement during the colonial period but has had a revival in the dominant discursive as well as the immediately lived domains in the current notions of national purity and identity.102It is argued that although the “scientific
98See also Charu Gupta’s “Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print” in Sexuality, Obscenity, Community:
Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001): 29-84.
99See Shashi Tharoor’s interview titled “Shashi Tharoor on his book Why I am a Hindu, and why he believes Hinduism is inherently liberal,” Firstpost, April 20 2018, where Tharoor discusses how Hinduism differs from Hindutva a political ideology that is used as an instrument for political mobilization by right-wing party.
https://www.firstpost.com/living/shashi-tharoor-on-his-book-why-i-am-a-hindu-and-why-he-believes-hinduism- is-inherently-liberal-4350753.html (accessed on 29 April 2018).
100Romila Thapar, “The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics”, Social Scientist 24.1/3 (1996):
3-29.
101See Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (USA: Basic Books, 1986). In his book Lifton examines the “biomedical vision as a central psychohistorical principle of the Nazi regime and the psychological behavior of the individual doctors”. (4) Lifton’s study discusses the collusion of the biomedical ideology with the Nazi political ideology that was geared towards the systematic annihilation of the Jews who were perceived as “gangrenous appendix in the body of the mankind”. It is interesting to note, how the Nazi doctors drew a parallel between a diseased human body and the nation (16). Lifton argues that the medicalized killing was performed by the Nazi doctors in order to revitalize the Aryan racial virtues that they argued were contaminated by the Jewish characteristics.
102See also, Avishek Parui’s “Masculinity and Populist Rhetoric in the Political Sphere: A Study of Post-2014 India.” (presentation, Political Masculinities and Populism Conference. Political Masculinities Network, University of Landau, Germany, December 1-3 2017).
purification of womb project” of the Hindu nationalist group has adopted a pseudoscientific mode for the creation of customized babies, ideologically they collude with the biomedical practitioners’ attempt to design the perfectly pure progeny through artificial reproductive technology.103In Desai’s Origins of Love, the fair and intellectually superior baby boy born to the surrogate Sonia may be interpreted as an extreme extension of Victor Frankenstein’s desire to create a perfect progeny informed by the notions of human perfectibility, rationality and agency inherited from Western European notions of Humanism and Enlightenment. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Enlightenment-centric science is deployed in Victor Frankenstein’s experiments aimed to produce a perfect male body with superior order of intellectuality and rationality. Such fantasy for purity and perfectibility bears resonance with Renu Mishra’s criteria for designing a bioengineered baby for inheriting her political legacy.
Desai’s fictional representation of the racial caste-based preferences made by the prospective parents throws light on how sections of people are perceived as the producers of the
“biological and affective labor” that are commodified and consumed by the privileged sections of society.104 Apart from showcasing the biomedically produced and controlled commodity-exchange between First World consumers and Third World laborers, Origins of Love also emerges as a complex and compelling depiction of the anxiety of contamination and consolidation of caste-based identity-markers in the social and political discourses in India today.
103 “Hindu nationalist group promises ‘superior’, fairer, babies full of values and culture,” Hindustan Times, May 09, 2017. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/customised-babies-anyone-hindu-nationalist-group- promises-superior-fairer-offspring/story-58DXkYE2HGXgpXzM74JnjM.html. (accessed on 21 October 2017)
104Vora, “Indian Surrogacy and Commodified Vital Energy”, 267.